Mr. World, our teacher, divided our class into groups and gave us a difficult assignment to do. Some project about climate or something. He warned us it was worth a large part of our assessment.

So we all agreed to meet at Denmark’s house (Man, that took a while to organise; most of the term was already done by the time we did.) We started divvying up the work – there was a lot of studying to do – and that’s when the arguments started.

To begin with, China complained that she’d been studying hard all year, while everyone else played PlayStation. Now, she had finally got an Xbox 360, and she wanted a chance to slack off.

Australia said he wasn’t going to be studying if no-one else was. If China was playing on the Xbox, he wanted to play too.

That got everyone riled up, because Australia has pretty poor grades, and they didn’t want to carry him. India complained that students who had been failing should do the lion’s share of the studying; they were going to get the most benefit from the groups better grades. (I think he wanted to play Xbox too.) Canada argued that the better students should do most of the work; it was easier for them.

Then the old argument broke out about whether studying actually leads to high grades anyway. I mean we’ve all heard stories of lucky kids getting good grades without trying. Maybe we should wait to see how World reacts if we don’t do anything?

Tuvalu is a nerdy swot, and insisted we had to study. He reckons he needs an A to keep his future open.

Then the jeers started: “An A?” “I’d be happy with a C+!” “As long as it isn’t an F.”

That argument went on for ages. Up until America arrived, late because of cheerleading practice. “How’s the study going?” she asked. She was disappointed: “I thought you guys would have something finished by now. We need to do well here!”

“That’s not what you were saying before! Last term you said you didn’t believe in grades,” someone grumbled. “What was that?” asked America. “Nothing,” came the mumbled reply. America was great as a friend, but you didn’t cross her.

Denmark’s mum popped her head in to tell us our parents were on their way to pick us up, so we hurriedly put aside our differences and came to a meaningful agreement.

We decided we were going to get a B+.

That’s a good achievement.

We’ll meet again in a couple of weeks; maybe then we can decide who will do what studying.

Comments

It is supposed to be a (wildly ignorant and uninformed) allegory of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, as I try to get my head around what it means to call an agreement on a less than 2°C temperature rise as a “meaningful agreement” without any agreement on what action they will take.

I am honestly at a loss as to why they would have spent any time arguing over (the metaphorical equivalent of) what grade they were going to get. (I’d welcome suggestions here.)

I think I would have been slightly happier if they were at least arguing one step closer to the action – what the total world CO2 emissions should be (how much studying needs to be done), but the real question is how much studying each is actually going to do.